On Being a Mom

Ahh, Mother's Day. It's a day I look forward to because I feel like I have a "Get Out of Jail Free" card all day long if I choose to play it. In the end, the knowing I have it is the part that seems to make me feel good as I rarely choose to play it. Just knowing I can get out of anything I want to makes it okay. I suppose that's pride...as long as I choose to do it, it's all good. Make me do something and I don't want to. I can't imagine where the children get it.

I'm seriously considering never going to church again. Not because I've given up on God or anything, but because they make me an emotional basketcase week after week. Last week it was the graduation video of all those kids I don't even know but whose baby pictures make me bawl like a baby anyway. This week it was some cute little video with kids saying all these funny things about their moms in their sweet little kid voices. Really, that should not make me cry! What have I turned into? I'm usually the Ice Queen, but here lately I'm more like a PETA fanatic who just finished watching Bambi.

Being a mama just changes you in ways you never expected. Besides the kidney stones, root canals, and hips that will never be the same, becoming a mom has made me someone who can't watch Ice Age without getting all emotional about the little caveman baby losing his mama and having to be taken care of by a wooly mammoth and a sloth. Really? Animated prehistoric animals?

Honestly, there isn't anything totally amazing to report about today. When the kids asked what I wanted, I told them a day without fighting and tattling. They just couldn't deliver. But that's okay. I had the perfect kind of day...a regular day spent with the people I love most (including my mom, who I am so thankful for) and with a mindset that allowed me to count every little blessing in every little moment of my day.

In church today, we read about Hannah, Samuel's mom (not my Samuel, obviously, because his mom is Amy, but the Samuel in the Bible) and the subject of wanna-be-moms came up. Hannah really, really wanted to be a mom, but it just wasn't happening for her. I know women in that position now, but I was also reminded that I was once a woman in that position. It's hard for me to remember back that far 5,001 poopy diapers, 3,475 baths, and 10 years of motherhood later, but I got a good reminder today.

And it made me thankful.

God granted me the desires of my heart. Boy, did he ever. My home and my heart and my laundry basket are overflowing with blessings. My garden is growing. My quiver is full.

When I look back on the young woman I was 11 years ago...a woman wondering, worried, desperate, I find myself realizing once again what a blessed not-as-young woman I am now. And all the "Mama, I need..." and the snot and the screaming and the crumbs and the arguing and the eating of the glue sticks (for the love, why will he eat glue sticks and not chicken????) melts away.

And I have the perspective I so desperately wish to keep every moment of every day. I have been given the greatest blessing a woman could ever receive. The blessing of tending a precious garden that will one day bear beautiful fruit. The blessing of sharpening arrows that will one day be used in battle. The blessing of nurturing those baby birds that will one day fly. I don't want to waste the precious little time I have worrying about the things that just don't matter. I want to make every moment count.

So I'll seek to love them more, snuggle them longer, pour more truth into their little minds, take more walks, play more games, laugh about the little things, and rest in the grace of the Lord. They are only mine for a while and oh how I want each moment to count.

Thank you, Lord, for my four sweet blessings. Help me to be the mother they need.